In Healthcare, Experience Matters

A few weeks ago I had the privilege of being asked to write a guest blog post for Odom Lewis, a healthcare communications staffing and recruiting firm. Angelia from Odom asked me to comment on Dr. Bridget Duffy's ever-inspiring presentation from the 2009 Gel Conference. Some may recall that I wrote about Dr. Duffy's talk here on this blog in June 2010.

In short, since most of us are not doctors, or may not even be conscious while we are being attended to, it is very hard to gauge the quality of the clinical attention we are receiving. However, every person has the ability to gauge their healthcare experience. When providers make the patient experience a strategic goal, everything else will follow: clinical outcomes, revenue, market share, etc.

For most of us, auto mechanics are a bit of a mystery. The oil light comes on, we drive to the dealership, they work some voodoo and we drive away under the impression that things are running smoothly under the hood. Unless you have the know-how, there isn’t a way to verify the quality of the work that is done. That is probably why savvy dealerships started offering fancy waiting areas – coffee, danishes, flat screen TVs and high speed Internet. If we can’t judge the craftsmanship, maybe we’ll make our service decisions based on the waiting experience. The interesting thing is that medicine is not much different.